Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Subjugation

Women will always be second-class citizens as long as we tolerate religion. Religion sanctifies hatred and prejudice. It gives authoritarians permission to act as viciously towards half of the human race as they choose to act. We accept religion because we need it; we need it because it allays fears, gives hope and gives us an identity. It satisfies a tremendous amount of overwhelming needs. But it is not real and therefore it becomes whatever people in power want it to become. It is used to attack women and we can either accept the trade-off--our subjugation in return for satisfying our needs--or we can mold it to the form we wish it to take. Religion does not belong only to men. Religious women need to either give it up altogether or take it back.

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Not all authoritarianism is religious. (Soviet Russia and Maoist China were atheistic authoritarian states.) And atheists in this country seem pretty authoritarian these days (though nascent as a cultural force and nowhere near as influential as organized religion).

Still, the amendment is an insult, and the bishops' intervention a political obscenity that deserves registration as a political entity and revocation of any tax privileges they enjoy as a church.

We need a group of churches to get ready to step in when the economy worsens, dedicated to helping the poor but able to act as a political unit. A group will step in no matter what liberals do--it would be much better if it were not a Koch tea-bagging group.

"And atheists in this country seem pretty authoritarian these days..."

In my experience, I do not see that. Certainly institutionalized atheism (in the Soviet and Mao examples) is very authoritarian. But that is not atheism born from a critical skepical mindset casting off the shackles of religious tradition. It is quite the opposite! That form of atheism is specifically forced upon the populous, along with a lot of accompanying government propoganda, to bend the will of the populous.

I have yet to see a prominent (or not so prominent) western atheist come off in a simliar way. I'm sure they are out there (humans are far too diverse for there to not be a sexist atheist out there), but there isn't an active dogmatic belief system which dictates the submissive role women should have in society.

By the very definition of atheism (insofar as it is not forced upon someone), there is no dogma! Hence, short of another factor (some other traditional belief or set of laws), the sky is the limit for equality.

Hardly. We just want religious types to leave us alone and stop doing things like trying to ruin our kids' educations by eviscerating science curricula or trying to slow down advances in medical science that bug them.